Assaults on the Casually Mundane by K. Jean King

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Like everyone else, many things come across my desk that require my signature. Most recently, I was handed paperwork for life insurance. And as I literally signed my life away, I noticed that the effective date for this life insurance policy was dated May 31 – two weeks before I signed it.

Pre- and Post-dating materials is not an odd occurrence. Shady bureaucrats (that seems a little redundant) do it all the time, for whichever reason might justify their needs at the moment:

“Here is the check for the Girl Scouts.”

“Sir, the Girl Scouts disbanded three months ago due to lack of funds.”

“Oh. …Well, predate the check, then just say it got lost in the mail. Damn, I am going to miss those Thin Mints.”

I could see the justification for predating a health insurance policy; then maybe the trip I took to the ER after that trampoline/umbrella accident last week would be covered. (Never. Dating. An acrobat. Again.) But predating life insurance is of no use at all to me, because I’m at least 80% sure that in the past two weeks I haven’t died.

Perhaps my insurance company is just really good, and they want to go the extra mile to protect against any unforeseen time-travel related deaths that will have occurred in the last two weeks, but haven’t happened yet (providing we don’t live in a fixed-time universe, in which case said time travelling would have already taken place, and I’d already be dead.)

Perhaps my insurance company is aiming to guard me against any raging Terminators that are due to show up in the past two weeks. Or men appearing and asking if I know about the Army of the 12 Monkeys. Without the fine print, I’m only left to assume it’s a very generous clause on their part.

It kind of reminds me of the “double-lifetime warranty” I have on my windows. I guess that if I become a zombie, any damage my windows suffer in the apocalypse will be covered. Which is inevitable; windows are the first thing to go in an apocalypse.

Or perhaps the window company covers me in my next incarnation as well:

“Hey! You! Stop throwing rocks at my windows!”

“It’s cool, man. I lived here in my last life. I literally got you covered.”

I like the coverage I have. My life insurance gives me peace of mind. For one thing, should anything happen to me, my family won’t be left with the scads of debt I’ve incurred because I’ve decided to be a writer instead of getting a real job.

And also, should The Doctor land his TARDIS anywhere in the universe, at any point in time, and a fight with a Dalek interrupts the time-space continuum in such a way that my life is blinked out of existence somewhere between May 31 and today, well, it’s good to know I’m covered.